Will You Be My Valentine…Font?

As a special Valentine's Day treat, we wanted to share with you some great fonts that remind us of love and friendship. (And the best part is—they're all low-cost or FREE! Just be sure to read the usage rights!) From classic to quirky, these fonts can make even the most unromantic message seem like a Casanova original. Well, that may be stretching it a bit. But we'll let you be the judge:

We hope you'll get some use out of these lovely, fun fonts for Cupid's Day! See below for a little bit of info about each typeface, as well as links to where you can find them! Happy Valentines Day from Kalico Design!

Wisdom Script  by James T. Edmondson was designed for Woods of Wisdom, a 50 part poster series on bad advice. But we promise you that using THIS font for Valentine's Day would be GOOD advice!

Sunshine in my Soul was created by Kimberly Geswein and is a lovely, playful handwritten script. 

Available in two styles – normal and sketch, this font has a sweet and delicate look not just in caps!

Seriously, can you go wrong with candy hearts on V-Day? A sweet combination of handwriting and illustration make this a fun and friendly font.

A classical romantic script. Be careful with the spacing on this one. A little bit goes a long way, though, and this font can produce a beautiful and extravagant piece.

Knight in shining armor anyone?! Who says chivalry is dead? Not when you dawn your princess a parchment sporting this writing!  You'll be a knight gleaming with "amore". (We crack ourselves up over here!)

First appearing as numerals only. Ribbon was designed by Dan Gneiding.

Vevey font was originally inspired by travel posters from the French Riviera. I know this font takes me away!

Pompadour! This font only comes in numerals. But oh what numerals they are. It is best used large so be creative in how you place it!

Pinterest is Open for Business!

Earlier in the year we did a post on how effective Pinterest can be as a marketing tool for your business. However, just recently Pinterest offered a new set of terms targeted specifically to businesses. These new terms now supply specialized provisions separate from those of a personal account.

For instance, Pinterest has made the "pin it" and "follow me" buttons, as well as the "profile" and "board" widgets very easy to incorporate into an existing business website. These buttons increase pinner traffic to your website by engaging users to link to things they like while they are there.

But one of the best resources we have found with these new offerings is Pinterest's case studies and best practices examples.

In one case study offered by Etsy they explain how adding a business account increased traffic to their individual shops and has outperformed the "like" button on Facebook in referral traffic. While business accounts usually have boards that are curated and maintained by specified users and not the general public, Etsy shares a strategy in their study of how allowing "guest pinners" diversified the content of their boards and drove more traffic to their actual site.

Etsy is just one case study offered to get your creative Pinterest juices flowing. There are several others including Jetsetter, Allrecipes, Organized Interiors, and Petplan Insurance. Additionally there are tips and tricks on how to make your business become successful through Pinterest marketing. So check it out. You can convert your existing account to a business account with the click of a button, or you can create a new Pinterest business account in just a few easy steps. We just set up our own Kalico business Pinterest page—check it out at www.pinterest.com/kalicodesign!

That's Pinteresting

Kalico's junior designer, Jen Tyler, has recently joined Pinterest users of the world!  We decided to turn her new found hobby (ah-hem, time sucker, procrastination enabler) into a great resource for marketing research and design inspiration. (PS-Jen would NEVER uses company time to do a little pinning, unless the job called for it—I'm sure of it! I think?) At any rate, here's some of Jen's most recent finds:

Lately, I’ve been doing a little research on the newest social media trend Pinterest. For those of you unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is a virtual pinboard that allows you to categorize and share things you find on the web. The cool thing is how easy it is. By creating topic-specific boards, you’re sharing the things you like with others in an aesthetically pleasing way. You can also view other user’s boards and search for specific topics, products or ideas. But, as much as I like to spend hours of company time looking at all the uses for a mason jar, Pinterest actually does have a great marketing application.

Pinterest has recently been driving greater traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube — combined! That is some serious traffic that is just waiting to be tapped into. For business owners it can be used as a tool to promote new products and as a way to interact with potential and existing clients. There are many strategies of exactly how to accomplish this. In fact, there is a whole Pinterest Board on Marketing with Pinterest. However, there are a few strategies that I found particularly hit home:

• When you set up your Pinterest account for business’ make sure to connect your Facebook, Twitter, website, etc. Making this connection adds social media icons under your profile picture that link to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

• Come up with creative and interesting board names. This is more likely to grab a viewers attention.

• Tag other Pinterest users in your pins by using “@username” in your descriptions. Network with other professionals and vendors in your field by using this feature.

So, you can see that Pinterest has infinite potential when it comes to business. You may already be using it to get your ideas into clients heads. How is it working for you? How do you apply it to marketing your business?

While both Jen and I have personal Pinterest accounts, we’re also considering creating a business account for Kalico. Let us know if you’d be interested in us adding this social media profile! And if so, what would like to see us pinning?